nts of
the past, but they will be real. The most important fact is that they
tend to become fewer and smaller and that the gains immeasurably
exceed them.

4. _Changes in Organization._--There are changes in the mode of
organizing the establishments in which commodities are produced, and
so far as these occur under a regime of active competition, they also
are improvements and give added power of production. The mills and
shops become larger and relatively fewer. There is a great
centralizing movement going on, since the large shop undersells and
suppresses the smaller one, and combinations unite many great shops
under one management. The effect of this, when it takes place in a
perfectly normal way, is akin to that of improvements of method. It
benefits society as a whole somewhat at the cost of individual members
of the body, and it causes wages to rise by adding continually to the
wealth-creating power of the men who earn them. We shall see that when
consolidations repress competition their effect is far from being thus
wholly beneficial, and that not only are particular persons injured by
them, but the community as a whole has a serious bill of charges to
bring against them. The securing of the gains that come by
consolidation without such evils is an end the realization of which
will tax the statesmanship of the future.

5. _Changes in Consumers' Wants._--The wants of consumers are
changing. They are growing more numerous as well as more refined and
intellectual. This expansion of desires follows the general increase
of productive power, since every one already wants some things that he
cannot procure, and all society has a fringe of ungratified wants just
beyond the limit of actual gratification. Even if all these wants that
are now near the point of actual satisfaction were to be satisfied,
the desires would at once project themselves farther. The mere
increase in earning power without any special education enlarges the
want scale, but intellectual and moral growth cooeperates with it in
that direction and calls latent wants into an active state. More and
more eagerly do men seek things for which the desire was formerly
dormant. Changes of this kind affect values, cause labor and capital
to move from group to group, and thus cause society as a whole to
produce less of some things and more of others. They sometimes cause
wholly new groups to appear, and draw workers and equipment from the
old ones.

[Illustra